I found myself in Warsaw. I wasn't supposed to be there. It wasn't
the first time this had happened. When I first joined the old company
back in Connecticut, they asked me what country I wanted. "Czech
Republic," I answered. Two days later the boss told me, "You're our man
in Poland." That was a good lesson.
So I found myself in Poland. That's also a play on words. I know. I
know. Everyone is sick and tired of listening to me talk about Poland.
I can hear the groaning and moaning even as I write, a kind of
echo-advance. You can stop here if you want.
Yet for me it was a breakthrough experience. For one thing, I began
writing in Poland. And drawing, though the drawing hasn't gone very
far. I always wanted to write and draw. I had the only job I've ever
enjoyed. My boss was 3500 miles away. That was part of it. I'm not
lazy. I just don't like being inspected.
I was supposed to be in Prague. No, not ten years ago?last week. I
drove from Frankfurt to Dresden, hoping to see the rebuilt historic
city center. I was there in 1991. It was still a pile of rubble,
largely untouched from the firebombing in the 40's. The weather had a
different plan last week. I couldn't see Dresden. I couldn't get to
Prague. I called the hotel in Prague where I'd made reservations. I got
an answering machine. That was not a good sign. The screaming headlines
on CNBC about "50,000 Ordered Evacuated From Prague" were not
encouraging.
I thought of calling Liana to explain that I would not be going to
Prague after all, but it was 6.30 AM. I figured that she would not be
pleased about receiving a call so early to say I was NOT arriving, nor
would well-wishing calls be quite so nice at that hour. At least all I
lost was a plan. Thousands lost their homes.
I drove to Berlin and caught the first train to Warsaw.
You can learn a lot about a country by learning the language. Pay close
attention to the first things they teach you. That will indicate what
is important to them. In Polish, you learn "nie ma" very early. It
means "there is none." You will hear the phrase "nie ma" all day long
everyday for your entire time in Poland. It is part of a longer saying
from Communist times: "nie ma, nie bylo, nie bedzie." That means "there
is none, there was none, there will be none." Times have improved. Now
it is merely poverty in the present. I wrote a very forgettable poem
about Nie Ma once, called The Cry of Nie Ma. It is a play on words, as
the Polish "kraj" means "country" and is pronounced exactly like "cry."
I still think that is clever. You will also learn the word "pszerwe."
That means "break or pause," as in a work break, pronounced something
like "pshare-vah." That's another holdover from the Commie Era. "We
pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." Clever system.
One of my first stops was IKO, the language school where I learned a
lot of this stuff. IKO is more than a language school. It is a way of
life. It was for me. By luck I ran into Dorota on the sidewalk outside
the school. She is the one who described the Polish personality to me
as "50\% anarchist and 50\% malcontent." I told her that explains why I
feel so at home in Poland. Lord knows it is not the weather or the
architecture.
No one goes to Warsaw for the weather or the architecture. The Nazis
destroyed it (the buildings, not the weather-they were bad but not that
b ad) in 1944 and the Communists took their own sweet time rebuilding
it to the lowest possible standard. Most of Warsaw is ugly, just miles
of vaguely crumbling gray concrete apartment blocks and sidewalks.
There have been some improvements. A few streets have bicycle lanes
like Amsterdam. No one rides a bicycle because there is no place to
store it and they would all be stolen, but the lanes are there. It's
another triumph of social engineering. Broken concrete and broken
dreams, but let's not get too sappy.
One thing you will notice, though, is the uneven and vaguely
unpredictable surface of things. Life in Poland is like that. Even the
sidewalks that have been repaired are often uneven. You have to watch
your step. If you walk up or down a flight of stairs anywhere, be
careful. You can not count on all the rises being the same height or
the steps being the same width. Even inside an apartment, there can be
a half-inch ridge running along the floor for no apparent reason, just
a little something to trip you up. It's like that at the entrance to
the older Commie shops. Newcomers typically fall flat on their face at
least once per week for a while until they catch on. It's not just the
sidewalks and floors. Everything is like that. Watch your step in this
place. Nothing is certain.
It's been two years since my last visit. It looks much the same,
sitting in suspended animation, waiting for a signal, much like
me.
There are a lifetime of memories in this city. Several lifetimes. I
feel that I am stretched across a spectrum of parallel worlds. I recall
the old song from the 60s, "should I stay or should I go. You gotta
make up your mind."
Poland is the only home I've ever had, but I left, citing the fact that
eventually everyone grows up and leaves home, proof positive that I
will never be a philosopher.
The real problem is much more insidious, a nightmare that haunts me
every day of my life, mostly in unremembered dreams but often in
blazing Surround Sound Technocolor full-tilt conscious daylight. I can
see Magda sitting on the little sofa. I can hear myself tell her that I
have decided to move to London. I murdered my soul in that moment. The
last three years have been?not good. I hate London. Let's leave it at
that.
I'm thinking of moving back to Warsaw. Magda is no longer there. Her
sister claims she is married and living in France. That's ok. There
should be someone else. It's a big country. Maybe I'll get it right
this time. Anything is better than London. I still have the travel
books for Cambodia. It's a thought.
I had a two-hour chat with Dorota the next day. She volunteered to help
me find an apartment, arrange for an internet connection, all kinds of
things. The price of housing has dropped like a stone. I can live in
Warsaw a whole year for the cost of living in London for about six
weeks. It's a thought. It's more than a thought.
No one goes to Warsaw for the weather or the architecture.
And Warszawa is pronounced Var-SHAW-vah. There's no reason to remember
that. I just thought you might want to know.
